Starbucks, Square: It's All About What Data Can Do

Written by: Dana Blankenhorn01/17/13 - 6:30 AM EST

Tickers in this article:
AXP FB GRPN KR MA SBUX V WMT

NEW YORK ( TheStreet) - Since Starbucks (SBUX) announced its deal with Square in August, as I wrote at SeekingAlpha.com, and rolled out the system to its 7,000 locations in November, as The Huffington Post and TheStreet noted at the time, the story has gotten as cold as hour-old coffee.

But it shouldn't be cold. Not if you're into investing in such areas as transaction processing, or big data, or even social marketing. Because this hits all of those buttons.

The transaction processing button is easy to describe. Until now this has been a cozy relationship among merchant processors, their resellers and banks. Merchants signed agreements with resellers approved by their banks, resellers delivered software and terminals, while processors handled the back end.

All this changes with Square. Square handles the processing, there is no reseller, and the money goes into the merchant's bank transparently. This lets Square offer a single deal with a single transparent "discount" fee, 2.75%. As opposed to the numerous, opaque risk-based prices the banks push through the processors, which are bad news for new, small merchants who are inherently risky.

When scaled fully, this Square deal could be the biggest threat Visa (V) and Mastercard (MA) have ever faced. A single deal, a single process and a clean sheet of paper cost much less to handle than the decades-old systems the big processors have built.

Then, big data. For Starbucks, this is all about the data.

Loyalty programs have been around for ages, but most companies don't know how to do them effectively. I have a Kroger (KR) Plus card, and it gives me discounts whenever I shop, in exchange for the transaction data. But I've never gotten an offer from the company, and never changed my shopping patterns in response to the card or the discount. Kroger might be adjusting inventory patterns from the data, but it can get that knowledge from inventory -- it does not need to pay me for it.

Starbucks now has an opportunity to reward loyalty automatically, without resorting to cards. It could even handle gift cards through Square, in the future, which would be great because the $25 iTunes card my kid got for Christmas was already compromised and didn't work. Doing this centrally, rather than at the edge, thus carries a real consumer benefit for gift-card givers. The "card" itself can just be blank, a token, and doesn't have to go into your George Costanza wallet.

Finally, social marketing. This is the big one.

Right now, merchants using a system like Groupon (GRPN) or Scoutmob pay two fees -- one to the marketer and one to the customer. What if they didn't have to pay the discount?

Data give Starbucks the power to create a "virtual currency" around not just its own products, but around other products. It gives Starbucks a way to account for this currency. The problem with Facebook's (FB) virtual currency was that there was no real-world connection, no way to get a real pay-out.

Usage of this site is governed by TheStreet's Terms of Use available here.
Information collected on this site may be collected by TheStreet and SignOnSanDiego.
TheStreet's use of information collected on this site will be governed by TheStreet's
privacy policy available here. SignOnSanDiego's use of information collected on this
site will be governed by SignOnSanDiego's privacy policy available
here. If either
TheStreet's or SignOnSanDiego's privacy policy have provisions that are more restrictive
than the provisions of the other party's privacy policy, such more restrictive provisions
shall not apply to such other party.